


E' stupido non dirtelo (It's stupid not to tell you)

by lunasenzanotte



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 12:39:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4625664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/pseuds/lunasenzanotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrea is a teacher everyone hates. One student more than the others. Gigi is a teacher everyone loves. One student more than the others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	E' stupido non dirtelo (It's stupid not to tell you)

Riccardo walks out of the university library and curses quietly. It’s raining. The cords of water are hitting the ground and there are already huge puddles on the road.

He stands in the passage, clutching the pile of books he had borrowed. They are the reason why he hesitates. If it was just for him, he wouldn’t mind getting wet while running home, but he can imagine what the rain would do to the books. And as he knows the witches who work at the library, they would want him to pay for the damaged books. Probably they would also roast him alive before that.

A car stops in front of him and the window rolls down.

“Riccardo?” a voice asks.

_Damn. This day couldn’t get any worse._

“Professor Pirlo.”

“I hope you don’t want to take these books out into the rain, do you?”

“No. That’s why I’m waiting for it to stop.”

“I don’t think it will stop soon,” his teacher notes.

An awkward moment of silence follows.

“I might give you a lift to save the poor sources of knowledge.”

Riccardo laughs in his mind. How typical. If he wanted to jump off a bridge, the bastard wouldn’t care a single bit, only make sure he didn’t have any book that could suffer a harm on him.

“Come on, I don’t bite!”

No. Of course he doesn’t bite. Literally taken. His words do, though, and Riccardo feels like he had been bitten enough earlier that day, and actually since the semester started.

But even though telling Pirlo to fuck off with his car and books sounds very tempting, it wouldn’t help his studies at all.

He moves from the passage and gets in the car.

***

They stop at the lights. Pirlo looks at the book on top of the pile.

“ _Analysis of a poem_ ,” he reads. “I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t think it will help you.”

“Why?”

“The analysis of a poem is a very… personal thing. Sure, there are rules, but you have to put a lot of your personal… If I gave the same poem to twenty people, there would be twenty different analyses, if you know what I mean.”

“Then why when someone says his personal opinion, you dismiss it every time?” Riccardo asks.

“You can have your own impressions and opinions, but they can’t be utterly stupid.”

Riccardo sighs. Obviously everything the students say or think is utterly stupid for Pirlo.

“A poem is a delicate thing,” Pirlo explains. “You have to feel it. Books can’t teach you that.”

And that’s when Riccardo knows that he’s screwed. He puts a curse on that day he decided to take up Italian Literature as his minor to Journalism. He also puts a curse on Daniele De Rossi, who told him it was easy. And he swears to himself that if he fails because of something as useless and stupid as the  _Italian medieval poetry_  course, Daniele’s head will be the first one he will chop off. Or maybe second. Maybe he will take on Pirlo first.

***

“If I asked my five years old niece, I would get a better answer than yours, Mr. Marchisio. Because this is so clear, I suppose you’re either incredibly stupid or trying to be funny. I suggest you leave the class or realize that your jokes are very bad, because as I can see, nobody is laughing!” Pirlo says through gritted teeth. 

Claudio snorts and starts playing with his iPhone instead.

“Pay attention,” Riccardo hisses at him.

“Why?” Claudio smirks. “He never says anything interesting anyways. Hey, Juventus is leading Novara 3-0 already. I can’t believe we’re missing that for this shit!”

Riccardo rolls his eyes. He doesn’t get how it’s possible that Claudio never does anything during lessons, except for checking football scores and transfer rumors on his phone, and still does much better than Riccardo when it comes to tests.

“Well, that’s all for today.”

The only sentence that ever gets to Claudio’s ears functions perfectly even this time. In one swift motion Claudio slips his phone back into his pocket and hurries to the door. Riccardo follows him, but notices that Pirlo is gesturing to him. He approaches him hesitantly.

“Can you stay for a minute?” Pirlo asks.

“Well, I’ll be late for Mr. Buffon’s class.”

“I’m sure Mr. Buffon won’t mind if you come a few minutes late.”

The sarcastic tone implies that in fact, Professor Buffon doesn’t mind almost anything the students do. That’s probably why he’s the most popular one. He lets the students call him “Gigi”, because as he says, “Professor Buffon” makes him feel too old. He teaches drama, which should be a serious matter, but has his own methods that other teachers call carefully “special”.

“It’s your last analysis,” Pirlo says, taking a paper from a pile on the table.

Riccardo would prefer not to see it again, so he rather looks at the ground.

“Yeah, I know it was… terrible.”

Pirlo nods and looks at the paper again.

“At first I thought you were just lazy,” he says.

Riccardo opens his mouth to defend himself. If Pirlo wants to call him lazy after the three nights he had spent staring into the books, he can as well leave right now.

“I don’t think that anymore,” Pirlo assures him. “If you were lazy, the whole analysis would be bad. But it isn’t.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. The verse and the form are well analyzed. But the poem itself, the theme, the main idea… that’s a… catastrophe.”

Riccardo lowers his eyes.

“Do you have any explanation for it?” Pirlo asks.

“Well, I guess… I just can’t feel it.”

“Feel what?”

“The poem.”

Pirlo looks at him in disbelief.

“Nothing at all? Not a single verse tells you anything?”

Riccardo shrugs. Pirlo shakes his head.

“This is Petrarch! Unless you’re a… a piece of dead wood, it has to make you feel something!”

Riccardo looks up.

“Well, then I’m probably a piece of dead wood.”

Pirlo puts the paper back and sighs.

“I’m here every Tuesday evening if you need help with anything. I’ve already said that a few times since the beginning of the semester, but nobody’s ever taken profit from that offer. I think you shouldn’t be as stubborn as your classmates and take it, though.”

Riccardo can think of at least one million better ways how to spend a Tuesday evening, but since Pirlo is apparently in some weirdly kind mood, he doesn’t want to offend him.

“I will think about it.”

“Very old and unoriginal way to tell me to go and hide in a hole, or how you youngsters like to say it,” Pirlo says calmly.

“Actually, it’s ‘go and  _die_  in a hole’,” Riccardo says. “But I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Alright. Well, then go to Mr. Buffon’s lesson. I’m sure that it’s way more interesting for you than my medieval lauds of beauty.”

And that’s the only thing Riccardo is sure Pirlo is right about.

***

He sneaks in and finds Gigi in the middle of the classroom, distributing some texts.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Pirlo wanted to… um, talk to me about my poem analysis.”

“And you survived it!” Gigi exclaims. “That deserves a round of applause!”

Of course the class takes every opportunity to make some noise, so they willingly applaud Riccardo as he goes to his place.

“Commedia dell’arte…” Gigi begins once everyone has their texts. “Is a form of improvisational comedy. That means… it will be fun!”

Riccardo drifts into daydream. It’s not that Gigi’s lessons are boring, they’re anything but boring. But sometimes when he has a bad day, Riccardo finds himself blocking out the sense of Gigi’s words, letting just the tone of his voice enter him. It resonates through him, makes him feel a little bit more confident, a little bit safer…

“Hey,” he hears the deep voice next to him and a hand falls on his shoulder softly. “Are you here with us, Riccardo, or did that old raven steal your soul?”

He looks at Gigi and smiles apologetically.  _If only you knew who has stolen my soul_ , he thinks.

***

Riccardo takes a deep breath. He’s been standing in front of that door for almost ten minutes now. He can’t hear any sound from the room.

_Maybe he isn’t there._

He finally lifts his hand and knocks at the door. If there’s no answer, he can leave but feel like he did everything he could. He won’t feel like a coward.

“Come in,” a voice calls.

_Damn._

Riccardo opens the door slowly and walks in.

“Good evening, Professor.”

Pirlo’s expression goes from its usual seriousness to surprise.

“I feel honored,” he says, in his half-sarcastic voice.

“If you are busy… I can come later.”

It’s the last attempt to escape. But he knows it won’t pass. Pirlo seems to be everything but busy.

“I’m not busy,” he says. “Sit down.”

Riccardo sits on one of the old armchairs. The cushions are worn and the colors of the upholstery faded. But they somehow fit this room. If he was here with someone else, he would feel nice, safe. There is a thick carpet on the floor, heavy curtains on the window, and the whole room smells of old books, dust and coffee. 

“So…” Pirlo says. “You told me that you didn’t feel the poems.”

Riccardo nods. Pirlo gets up, walks up to a shelf on the opposite wall and takes a book from it. He flips through it and then lays it on the table.

“Let’s take this one.”

Riccardo looks at the page. He reads the whole poem. Then he looks back at Pirlo.

“So?” Pirlo asks.

“What?”

“It tells you nothing?”

Riccardo shakes his head. Pirlo sighs.

“Read this,” he says and shows Riccardo one verse. “Aloud.”

“What fate, what power or what insidiousness / still guides me back, disarmed, to that same field / wherein I’m always crushed?”

He feels stupid. He decides that poetry is an invention of the Devil.

“What does it mean?” Pirlo asks. “Why did he write it?”

“Um…”

“Who did he write it for?”

“Laura.”

Riccardo feels proud of himself. Pirlo looks at least a bit relieved.

“Who was Laura?” he asks.

“A woman he loved?”

“Of course. But what was the problem?”

“That she didn’t want him?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Pirlo explains. “It’s not like she didn’t want him simply because she thought he was ugly or whatever shallow reason you reject people for these days. We don’t know for sure, but we suppose that she was married at that time. So it’s not like she didn’t want him, she  _couldn’t_  want him.”

Riccardo listens to him. It makes sense like this, but not in any relation to the poem.

“So what does he say in the poem? What is the field he talks about?”

There’s silence.

“Riccardo,” Pirlo says quietly and it sounds exhausted. “He says that his love for her is inevitable, but it’s destroying him. He knows that they will never be together. She’s married, she’s a noblewoman, she cannot break the rules. Yet he cannot stop loving her.”

Riccardo looks at him. His face is now close. Much closer than he would like it to be.

“A thousand times, o my sweet enemy / to come to terms with your enchanting eyes / I’ve offered you my heart, yet you despise / aiming so low with mind both proud and free.”

Riccardo’s heart pounds in his chest and his mind is racing. It’s not a simple fascination with how his teacher recites the verses without looking into the book, it’s rather the shock caused by the fact that he’s looking right into his eyes instead. It’s like the words are aimed at him. It’s intimate, much more intimate than it should be, and he doesn’t know how to react.

Pirlo keeps looking at him. Riccardo wants to move, but he doesn’t dare. Finally his teacher speaks again.

“Have you never loved anyone you knew you couldn’t have?” he whispers.

Riccardo’s mouth is dry. He’s shocked by the question, but even more by the image that appears in his mind as he thinks about it.

“Yes,” he says quietly. “Yes, I have. I… I do.”

The expression on Pirlo’s face is now indescribable. There’s remorse, hurt, despair, jealousy… Suddenly he looks vulnerable. It’s so different from how he knows him from his lessons. For the first time in his life Riccardo admits to himself that Professor Pirlo, the book-hugging freak, is actually human.

Then the look in his eyes changes. There’s still hurt and jealousy, but they turn cold. He reaches for the book at the table.

“This one,” he says, his voice sharp and reserved again, same as Riccardo knows it from the lessons. “Analyze it.”

Riccardo reads it, but the words don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense anymore. He knows what the poems are about. He’s sure that he could feel them now. But he can’t say it. He can’t tell Pirlo. It would be like telling him about his own feelings. His own feelings for someone. He cannot open up like that. They are his secrets. The feelings, the dreams… they are the only things he has from the person he loves, because he will never have more. He cannot share them with anyone, let alone with someone he hates.

“I can’t.”

Pirlo looks at him.

“I can’t,” Riccardo repeats.

“Then…” Pirlo says harshly and closes the book. “You should probably reconsider your choice of school. Because in my whole career I’ve seen many students who were stupid, lazy or slow, but none of them…  _not a single one_  of them was a combination of all this, and a piece of ice in addition to it!”

Riccardo feels his eyes sting. He wants to say something, he wants to defend himself, he wants to say that it’s not fair and he’s not a piece of ice at all, but he knows that he would start crying as soon as he would open his mouth. He knows that he has to get out of here before the tears come. He mustn’t let him see them.

He jumps up, storms out of the room and bangs the door behind him.

***

He runs down the stairs. He can’t even see the way properly. Everything is blurry, but he keeps running.

A figure appears behind the corner and he doesn’t manage to stop soon enough. He ends up crashing into the person. He gasps, half surprised by the impact, half startled by realizing who the person is.

“Hey, hey!” Gigi calls and steadies him. “Slow down!”

Slowing down is the last thing he wants to do now. He wants to  _get the hell out of here_. Now.

“Are you alright?” Gigi asks, cupping Riccardo’s face and tilting his head up. “What happened?”

Riccardo looks at him and takes a breath.

“I…”

And that’s it. So far they were just tears, now he can feel his body tremble. Gigi wraps his arm around his waist and pulls him towards one door.

“Come here!” he says.

Riccardo hesitates. He would still prefer getting out of the building.

“You can’t go anywhere like this,” Gigi says like he was reading his mind. “You’ll end up getting hit by a car, or worse.”

Riccardo gives up. Gigi opens the door to the empty classroom. He sits Riccardo down on the chair behind his desk and leans over the desk himself.

“You went to see the old raven, didn’t you?” he asks then.

Riccardo nods, not daring to look up at his teacher.

“What awful things did he say to you that they made you cry?”

“That I was…”

He takes a deep breath and somehow manages to lift his head to look Gigi in the eyes.

“That I was stupid, lazy, slow… and a piece of ice.”

Gigi chuckles and shakes his head like he just heard an old story. Then he reaches out, takes a strand of Riccardo’s hair that got stuck to his wet cheek, and tucks it back behind his ear.

“Listen to me,” he says quietly. “You are not stupid, lazy, nor slow. And the least of all are you a piece of ice.”

“But…” Riccardo objects, but Gigi lifts his hand and stops him.

“You are none of these things,” he says firmly. “You may seem to be stupid, slow and lazy because you rarely speak up. It’s the contrast with all the loud people around you. It seems like they speak all the time, but in fact, most of the things they say don’t make sense. They speak just for the act of speaking, not because they have the answers. You don’t. And it seems like you’re cold because you don’t let your feelings show. You’re introverted. Not stupid, not cold.”

“But you’re the only one who understands,” Riccardo sighs.

“You know, what I will tell you now won’t comfort you, but you should know it. The reason why you can never give Pirlo what he wants…” Gigi says and pauses. “Is that he asks you to analyze poems. He asks you to feel them, and to tell him how you feel them. He wants you to open up. And you never will.”

Riccardo remembers the moment when he understood the poem but couldn’t say anything. He nods.

“Your classmates can give him what he wants, because they don’t give a damn. They imagine a girl they had a crush on and who refused to fuck with them in their car on their way back from prom, and spill it out. You can’t do that.”

“I know,” Riccardo whispers.

Gigi looks at him and smiles.

“But that doesn’t mean that you’re a piece of ice. I’m pretty sure that underneath this all, you’re more passionate than anyone can imagine.”

Riccardo gets up from the chair. Gigi keeps watching him, his eyes warm and calm. Riccardo envies him how he can cope with every situation  - even with a crying introverted idiot – like he faced it every single day. For a second he wishes he could trust him more. And he already trusts Gigi a lot. But he wishes he could tell him  _everything_  that happened in Pirlo’s kingdom of books. He wishes he could tell him who he thought of when Pirlo asked him that question. Why he cannot open up.

Maybe he can. Didn’t Pirlo tell him that he chose the wrong school? Then he can leave right now. He simply won’t come back anymore. Tomorrow he will just go to the office and tell the secretary that he’s cancelling his study program. Then he will get wasted somewhere. He will end up fucking someone he would never fuck while sober. For a few days he will feel like shit. And then maybe he will wake up and start over.

Then, if he leaves, it’s like admitting that Pirlo was right. That he is indeed stupid, lazy, slow, and a piece of ice. It means leaving his friends, and he knows that he would miss them, even Claudio with his omnipresent iPhone announcing the results of the matches and “hey, have you heard about Ibra going to PSG?” in the middle of a test. It means leaving everything behind.

He can’t do it. He can’t leave.

“You don’t have to decide now, you know,” Gigi says quietly and Riccardo wonders how the hell he can see into him like he was made of glass. “Go home, sleep on it, you have plenty of time to decide. Don’t do anything you would regret later.”

Riccardo nods and goes to the door. Then he stops.

“It’s you,” he whispers, his back turned to Gigi. “The reason why I can’t… open up. The one I think about when I read the poems. The one I think about all the time. It’s you.”

He already wants to be far away from here, and running through the door wouldn’t be fast enough. He wishes he could just vanish into thin air.

He can hear the desk creak quietly when Gigi lifts his weight from it. Riccardo doesn’t know where he suddenly takes the courage from, but he turns around to face him.

“I can’t hide it anymore. I can’t pretend anymore. Because it’s exhausting, you know, holding it all inside. Now I know. Because whatever you say now, I’m glad I told you. I feel like with you I can be really me, like I can tell you everything, and when you speak, I feel safe and I feel like I can become something… like I can be a better person. And right now I want to be dead but at the same time I don’t regret telling you. It would be stupid not to tell you.”

Gigi stays silent during his whole rant. Then he smiles.

“Cold, you?” he whispers and Riccardo suddenly realizes that they are closer than he had thought. Gigi’s lips almost touch his when he speaks and his arms are wrapped around his waist. “I can tell you, I’ve never ever held a piece of ice that would burn so much.”

 _It’s my teacher_ , runs through Riccardo’s mind.

_Screw it._

His lips land on Gigi’s and it’s exactly like he had imagined it would be. It feels just right. He feels right. Safe, steady, and free at the same time. He gasps as Gigi’s teeth nibble on his lip and Gigi laughs. They are so close that Gigi’s laughter resonates through Riccardo’s chest. When Gigi runs his fingers through Riccardo’s hair, Riccardo looks up at him.

“You look just like an angel, you know?” Gigi whispers.

Riccardo feels his cheeks flush. It’s the best compliment he’s ever received. He cannot remember if it actually isn’t the  _first_  compliment he’s ever received. All he knows is that right now, he would do anything Gigi could possibly ask him to do. If he asked him to kills himself, he would open the window and jump.

Before he can collect his thoughts, he finds his fingers unbuttoning Gigi’s shirt and his lips on the older man’s neck. Just as his legs buckle and he’s about to drop on his knees, Gigi stops him, lifting him back up.

“Not here!” Gigi says. “I have to admit that the possibility of getting caught by old good Pirlo would definitely spice things up, but I like my work and I don’t think the dean would approve of us impersonating Achilles and Patroclus here.”

Riccardo laughs shortly, but has to agree. He follows Gigi out of the building to his car. Just as he gets into the car, he looks up and his gaze flies to the window with heavy curtains.

Even though it’s already dark, he can see the curtains move.

***

As soon as the door of Gigi’s apartment closes behind them, Riccardo pushes Gigi against the wall and drops on his knees. He feels Gigi’s fingers in his hair, gentle at first, then gripping tighter tentatively and finally tugging deliberately when he realizes that Riccardo doesn’t complain. He wouldn’t complain even if he could speak, about anything that’s happening.

When Gigi reaches down and collects him in his arms from the floor where he’s trying to catch his breath, Riccardo feels like he wouldn’t mind if Gigi took him right there on the cold tiles, he wouldn’t mind it at all, but he doesn’t object. This is a dream, and you don’t alter your dreams.

He finally gives up, all his reserves of courage used up. He lets himself be guided to the bedroom, takes off his clothes like someone else was controlling his body. He knows what he’s doing, but it doesn’t feel like it’s really him doing it.

He can feel everything melt down inside of him. The fear of not being good enough is shattered into pieces, because how could he not be good enough when this gorgeous man wants him,  _desires_  him? The fear of letting himself be heard, already cracked, disappears and he lets himself be heard, calls out Gigi’s name, and also God’s name, because for the time being he doesn’t care if God exists or not, and about a thousand different things run through his mind and he’s not sure which ones he’s saying aloud. He feels incredibly safe and warm and wants to feel like that forever.

He curls up into a little ball, as if to keep the warmth longer. His eyelids are heavy and he drifts into the sweet drowsiness almost immediately. He only feels when Gigi moves his hand and touches him He expects Gigi to tell him to get up and leave, but when Gigi’s fingers touch his face, it’s not a touch that’s supposed to wake him up.

“Little angel,” Gigi whispers.

Riccardo manages to respond with an exhausted smile before his body and mind finally do a synchronized decision and switch to the sleeping mode.

***

“From time to time less reproachful seem to me / her heavenly figure, and her charming face / and sweet smile’s airy grace / while her dancing eyes grow far less dark I see.”

The words find complete silence. Nobody in the classroom dares to move, nobody wants to catch Pirlo’s attention.

“So? What do you make of it?” Pirlo asks.

The class remains silent. Only one hand is up, in the middle of the class. Pirlo raises his eyebrows.

“Mr. Montolivo wants to tell us something?” he says sarcastically. “Alright, go on, we’re listening.”

Riccardo is quite sure that the “we” is more pluralis majestaticus than anything, because the class rarely listens to anything that is said during these lessons. But he gets up nevertheless.

“It’s meant to say…” he starts and looks at Pirlo.

“Yes?”

“That the person he loves doesn’t despise him for his feelings, but… understands. That even though the love isn’t meant to be and they will never be together, and probably the love is unrequited, the person he loves… respects his feelings and doesn’t want to hurt him, that’s what the eyes are meant to tell him. That there is no hate, and that it’s not a question of coldness or arrogance. It’s simply the incompatibility of the two of them.”

There is a moment of silence. Then the classroom wakes up. A voice from the back of the room that sounds like Nocerino’s expresses its owner’s surprise that “Montolivo can actually speak”.

“Well…” Pirlo says and clears his throat. “You can… you can also understand it like this, yes. Thank you. Sit down.”

He sits down and notices Claudio is staring at him, the iPhone completely forgotten in his hand.

“You got laid yesterday?” he asks.

“Shut up.”

His eyes flicker to Pirlo, who immediately turns around, involuntarily revealing that he heard Claudio’s remark very well. Claudio chuckles.

“You so did,” he says and looks back at his iPhone. “Holy crap, sorry to disappoint you, but Atalanta lost to Lazio!”

Riccardo just smiles. Nothing can disappoint him anymore.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "E' stupido non dirtelo" by Daniele Stefani.


End file.
